


Sometimes He Needs To Talk

by cuddlyharkness



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Implied Relationships, Post Miracle Day, temporarily staying with the ponds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 08:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3803908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlyharkness/pseuds/cuddlyharkness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Miracle Day, Jack Harkness goes to stay with the Ponds for a while. However, he went because he needed someone who would understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes He Needs To Talk

Jack Harkness was never usually a man to confide in others. He wasn't easily broken down by requests that he talk, requests that he give away some sort of information about the past he tried to keep hidden. However, today was a day where he was tired of saying no, tired of bottling things up and not removing the cap every so often. Today was a day where, as he woke, he had felt the weight in the pit of his stomach far too early for him to contain it all day. 

The pillows were warm under his head, his body heat having dissipated through the night as he lay snug under covers atop a comfortable couch. The room smelled vaguely of bacon and pancakes, a scent that danced beneath his nose and coaxed him out of his comfortable blanket cocoon that he’d managed to create over night. 

This was a new place, a temporary spot until he figured out where he would be going. Torchwood was all but gone, destroyed after the events of Miracle Day, Gwen having darted off to care for her child, Anwen. Jack knew he couldn't blame her, knew she deserved a good life after everything she and her loving husband had gone through over those last few years that Gwen had gotten sucked up in a world that she never quite got used to. He was happy for her, happy for Rhys and their baby, happy for the ghosts of Toshiko and Owen that had probably been able to move on after the destruction of the Hub, and he was happy for the faint whispers of Ianto that had always swept through the empty base when the coffee maker would brew. 

For a while, he lay there thinking about the old team. His gut tightening as he thought of all of them, happy and free from everything he’d put them through. The Doctor would be happy too, to see that he was starting to accept the loss...

Oh, The Doctor was still a fresh wound in his mind. Even after so long, he still felt the pain of never seeing him anymore. He still waited, his eyes tired and his mind rampant in the later hours of the nights. Steel blue eyes always kept a careful watch over the stars, only blinking when he began to drift off or when the lights upstairs would come on and a gentle hand would fall to his shoulder. Some nights, it was a gentle, soft hand of a woman, other nights it was the slightly more calloused hand of a man. Both occasions saw him breaking, both parties having fallen witness to the sheer willpower that kept him from getting wet eyes at the thought of that distant Time Lord, so close and yet so far away from where he needed to be. 

Last night the woman had sat up with Jack on the front porch, watching the stars as they spoke of a man far away from them. She had smiled and laughed as she told her tales, tales of Centurions and Autons and space whales, and he had fought tears as he told his tales of Satellite Five and the distant grinding gears and the man who their beloved Doctor used to be. 

“He’s wonderful...” She had said, staring down into the cup of hot chocolate she had made prior to taking to the chill outside. “Wonderful, smart, chaotic...”

“And always beautiful..” Jack had interjected, his smile cracking the facade he had put on for so long. For the first time, the light behind the captain’s eyes blinked out, the mask falling away from his face to reveal the shell of the man beneath. Truth be told, Jack had never stopped hurting. From the minute The Doctor took off in his TARDIS the last time, the needles poking holes in his heart had steadily grown. The man beside this sleek woman was war-torn and abandoned, the hardened features of his face having not been carved by the gentle hands of the artist of fate, but by the repetitive hammering of Time. Pain had withered away more of what was left of Captain Jack Harkness than any loss he had ever felt, and the woman caught her first glimpse of just how it really feels to love The Doctor. 

“You loved him...didn't you? Not just the traveling, not the sights or the things he could show you...but you loved him for him.” The Scottish lady spoke softly, tiptoeing around words as to not shatter the fragile pieces that crumbled in ruin around him. 

“Yeah...I did. I still do...but we see where that’s gotten me, yeah?” His laugh was weak, tired, and frail. The rest of the night hadn't held much in the way of conversation, just the quiet murmurs of questions and answers. In the back of his mind, Jack could still remember the sound of the dematerializing TARDIS. 

This morning, he lay awake for several minutes before that woman roused him from his comfort and his memories. She was bright eyed and happy this morning, all traces of the conversation last night put to the back of her mind in place of a cheery attitude and noticeable amounts of pancake batter flicked into her fiery hair, loosely tied up behind her head. Jack smiled as he sat up, carefully reconstructing his defenses. 

“Come on then...breakfast will get cold quick, and you know how Rory hates waiting for you to get up. He might eat your share this morning.”

“Yeah yeah...I’ll be there in a second, Amy...”

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to start Part Two of TMFOTMWND, but I lost all the previously written fics on my computer. Yay. So things will be very slow.


End file.
